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Soviet Union [USSR] TECHNOLOGY AND INFORMATION TRANSFER
Soviet leaders have tried to overcome technological
backwardness by acquiring technology from the more advanced Western
and Asian countries. Since 1917 Soviet officials have worked to
obtain not only foreign equipment but also technological processes,
know-how, and information. Acquisitions have helped the Soviet
Union, in some cases, to compensate for a poorly developed
indigenous technology and, in other cases, to bolster or provide a
missing component in an otherwise fairly well-established industry.
The transfer of foreign technology began not long after the
Bolshevik Revolution and continued through the 1980s, although the
official emphasis, as well as the kind and quantity of technology
transferred, varied greatly over time. Lenin initially wanted to
avoid any dependence on Western technological imports, but the lack
of funds for indigenous development forced him to seek limited
foreign investments. Stalin emphasized technological autarchy. He
poured huge resources into developing indigenous science and
technology, and he severely restricted contacts with Western
businessmen and scientists. Nonetheless, severe backwardness in
some key industries forced Stalin to engage in short-term borrowing
from the West. During World War II, the Soviet regime used captured
German equipment and technological experts to help develop lagging
Soviet industries.
The post-Stalin era brought renewed interest in dealing with
the West. Khrushchev eased restrictions on Soviet access to Western
technology but found that Western governments sought political
concessions in return for trade agreements. Under Brezhnev, Soviet
technology acquisitions increased markedly. Many long-term
agreements, as well as accords providing for foreign construction
of industrial plants in the Soviet Union, were signed during the
Brezhnev era. By the late 1970s, however, both Western and Soviet
leaders began to question the political and economic wisdom of
technology transfers. By the early 1980s, technology transfers from
the United States to the Soviet Union were curtailed severely in
response to political, economic, and military concerns. At the same
time, however, the Soviet Union began trying to obtain Japanese
technology--particularly electronics, computer science, and
metallurgy--because the Japanese were much less restrictive in
their exports.
In 1986 Gary K. Bertsch, a United States specialist in Soviet
technology, described five means by which technology has been
transferred to the Soviet Union. The most direct, and probably the
most common, was the commercial sale of equipment to the Soviet
Union. When the West provided opportunities, Soviet leaders
increased purchases of Western equipment.
The second type of transfer included the extensive and
complicated modes of industrial cooperation between Western firms
and their Soviet counterparts. According to Bertsch, this
cooperation has had many forms, among them: sales of equipment
(sometimes for complete production systems or turnkey plants),
including technical assistance; licenses of patents, copyrights,
and production know-how; franchises of trademarks and production
know-how; purchases and sales between partners, involving exchanges
of industrial raw materials and intermediate products; subcontracts
involving the provision of production services; sales of plant,
equipment, and technology with payment in resulting or related
products; production contracting, involving agreement for
transferred production capabilities in the form of capital
equipment and technology; coproduction agreements allowing partners
to produce and market the same products resulting from a shared
technology; and joint research and development.
Another type of transfer involved foreign travel by Soviet
scientists, participation by them in academic and scholarly
conferences, and screening of literature. In the early 1980s, as
part of a general tightening of policies on technology export, the
United States government began restricting Soviet scientists from
traveling in and attending meetings in the United States to prevent
their access to American science and technology. Screening of
literature has been a valuable source of information for the Soviet
Union. Soviet scientists have had easy access to Western and
Japanese publications, and for years they have relied heavily on
this literature as a primary source of foreign technology.
The fourth type of transfer was covert acquisition. This kind
of transfer was the most feared because of its potential impact on
Soviet and United States military development. The ways in which
the Soviet Union acquired technology varied and involved more than
their intelligence services. For example, some acquisitions were
carried out by Soviet diplomats stationed worldwide. Other
acquisitions were made by diverting controlled technology products
from legitimate trade destinations to the Soviet Union. Finally,
some acquisitions occurred through legitimate firms established by
the Soviet Union or East European countries in Western nations.
The fifth type of transfer was intergovernmental agreements on
scientific and technological cooperation. In the early 1970s, for
example, the United States and the Soviet Union concluded eleven
separate agreements pledging cooperation in such fields as science
and technology, environmental protection, atomic energy, medicine,
and energy. In some cases, these agreements led to frequent
exchanges between American and Soviet scientists cooperating in
specific areas. This type of arrangement, however, decreased
markedly in the late 1970s as the United States responded to Soviet
emigration policies and to Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and in
Poland. Under Gorbachev, cooperative agreements resumed.
Using these forms of transfer, the Soviet Union obtained a
range of technologies, some of which probably had significant
military applications. The chemical and automotive industries
relied heavily on Western imports. In the early 1980s, the Soviet
Union bought equipment badly needed for the gas pipeline it was
building from Urengoy to Uzhgorod. It acquired technologies
applicable to the military, including complete computer systems
designs, concepts, and software, plus a variety of Western generalpurpose computers, minicomputers, and other hardware. It acquired
low-power, low-noise, high-sensitivity receivers; optical, pulsed
power source and other laser-related components; and titanium
alloys, welding equipment, and furnaces for producing titanium
plates applicable to submarine construction.
These acquisitions raised concerns in the West that the Soviet
Union was deriving too many military and economic benefits inimical
to Western interests. Some critics argued that technology transfers
allowed the Soviet Union to save millions of rubles (for value of
the
ruble--see Glossary) in research and development costs and
years of development time. They also argued that Soviet
acquisitions allowed the regime to modernize critical sectors of
industry without absorbing rising military production costs, to
achieve greater weapons performance, and to incorporate
countermeasures to Western weapons. They further argued that the
West should impose stricter controls on such transfers. This
position was adopted by the United States government in the early
1980s, when it began imposing strict controls and urging West
European governments to follow suit.
Not everyone agreed with this position, however. Western
analysts in the late 1980s pointed out that both the econometric
and the case-study approaches used to assess the impact of
technology transfers produced tentative results. One conclusion was
that the Soviet experience in using and assimilating Western
technology was a mixed success. In some cases, particularly in
military-related industries, the Soviet Union was successful in
incorporating Western equipment or processes. In other areas, the
equipment was used inefficiently or not at all.
Many Soviet scientists and policy makers shared this negative
assessment. During the 1980s, the Soviet press published many
articles in which Soviet officials complained that they were
wasting valuable hard currency to purchase equipment that lay idle
because of industry's inability or unwillingness to install it.
Other officials, including former Academy of Sciences president
Aleksandrov, argued that the Soviet Union did not need to import
Western technology because it had the capability to develop it
domestically. In fact, too much reliance on Western imports had
harmed the Soviet Union because indigenous institutions had been
denied the opportunity to develop the technology and, hence, to
grow technologically.
Despite these arguments, the policy under Gorbachev appeared to
Western observers to increase technological trade. Soviet
authorities instituted some organizational changes to facilitate
and to encourage more contact with Western firms. Yet Gorbachev
also expressed concern over the balance of payments issue and
cautioned against too many purchases from the West.
Data as of May 1989
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